Brett Ratner has set up his first feature directing gig since Rush Hour 3 in 2007. Deadline reports it will be the long-gestating project formerly known as Trump Heist, now titled Tower Heist.
It will star Ben Stiller, who plays “he overworked manager of a luxury building who, along with other staff, lost their pensions to a Bernie Madoff-like Wall Street crook. It so happens that the fraudster is being held under house arrest in the luxury penthouse apartment upstairs, and the manager and four cohorts figure a heist will make them whole.”
Brian Grazer will produce the project, whose script has been worked on by many high profile writers including Adam Cooper & Bill Collage, Russell Gewirtz, Rawson Thurber, Ted Griffin, Leslie Dixon, Noah Baumbach and Jeff Nathanson.
Ratner says it is “the quintessential New York heist movie, where a bunch of blue collar employees in a tower building pull off the ultimate heist.” Baumbach, who worked with Stiller on Greenberg, did some “specific character work” on the script for him.” If you are expecting another Ocean’s 11, which Ratner was in the running to direct, you may be disappointed the director says:
These are real guys whose talent is they know the inner workings of the building and the people in it. It took a long time for this to come together, but it was totally worth the wait. This has a lot of heart to go along with the humor.
It also sounds like Ratner won’t take another hiatus after Heist as he plans to move forward with the Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner biopic, simply titled Playboy.
Tower Heist starts production this November in New York.
Are you looking forward to see Ratner return to the camera? How does this project sound?